The Long-Awaited Relaunch!
September 10, 2009
Welcome to the new and improved Geargals site! After months and months of promises and delays, we finally got our stuff in a pile to bring you this snazzy new site. Based on reader feedback, we wanted a site with more ways for readers to communicate with us and with the industry. The super-snazzy brand spanking new Geargals Forum is now live, for you all to fill up with chatter. So go and chatter, and behave well, for if you are foolish, I shall smite you from the Forum and you will chatter no longer. One other thing about the Forum: it’s for ladies only! Sorry, dudes. I know I’m all about equality but let’s face it, most of the outdoor forums are mostly for dudes with a “ladies room” or some garbage. So this is my way of helping to balance the Internet. However, since the point of this site is to give women more information about gear and outdoor stuff, I will make an exception for industry peeps. So if you’re an industry dude, let me know and you get a free hall pass to wander the forum and contribute in valuable and meaningful ways.
Also new on our site is the much-hyped Geargals Dressup! It’s our most fun new feature and the one many of you have been waiting for. You may have noticed we’ve reviewed a lot of gear since we launched the Geargals site in 2007. We’ve had the privilege of checking out dozens of brands and hundreds of products, and we wanted to find a way to recognize the stand-out pieces from the last year and a half.
In true Geargals fashion, we couldn’t bring ourselves to do some lame, recycled “gear of the year” gimmick, because you can turn to your favorite magazine for that (oooh, the “gear issue!” I think my favorite tidbit of “gear issue” lameness was a feature on “The North Face Jacket.” Um, right, which one? Could it be more obvious that “gear issue” magazines are bunk? Anyway…) Thus, instead of cranking out tired rhymes and the standard studio pics of the “gear of the year” pile, we developed the Geargals Dressup! We chose our favorite products from the last year and made a game out of them. Visit the Geargals Dressup page and choose from all the gear we thought was top-notch, and just drag-and-drop it onto the Geargal and the Geardog to create your own perfect outfit.
We chose the gear for this year’s dressup out of all the products we tested in 2007 and 2008. Featured on the Geargals Dressup this year are:
On Geargal-
Mountain Hardwear Stimulus Jacket
Mountain Hardwear Synchro Pants
Mountain Hardwear Compressor Jacket
Ellsworth Epiphany Mountain Bike
Mountain Hardwear Synchro Pants
Cannondale Roam Bike Shoes
Julbo Trail Sunglasses
Sugoi Neo Pro Bike Shorts
Patagonia Ice Field Jacket
Volkl Queen Attiva Skis
Scarpa Star Lite Ski Boots
Isis Long Jane
Julbo Revolution Goggles
La Sportiva FC 1.1 Hiking Shoe
La Sportiva Nepal EVO GTX Boot
APF Powersox
On Geardog-
D-Fa Sub Woofer Jacket
Ruffwear Bark ‘n Boots Grip Trex
We wanted to feature one of Geardog’s favorite toys, but he loves the Gourdo the best and however we drew it, it looked just….wrong. I’ve gotten some weird looks carrying it around in real life, too, so for now we’ll just say: Geardog likes the Gourdo.
Happy dressing! Keep checking back for the, er, last-half-of-2009 Dressup! And don’t forget to get the conversation going on the Forum!
